Outside My Studio

GIL KANE:: At this point you've been working with Valerian now, what, 24 years?

JEAN-CLAUDE MÉZIÈRES: Twenty years. Nineteen years exactly. I started Valerian in '67.

KANE:: Does the strip satisfy all of your interests in terms of comics or are there projects that you and Christin have talked about that are outside of Valerian?

MÉZIÈRES: Well. Yeah, there's always interest in other fields. Especially when I am hoping to work with several people and do something outside my studio. So we made some video experiments which were interesting but totally a loss of time and money -- because it was an experiment -- but that really pleased me. I still think of experimenting [with] something with a video. But it is so heavy, money-wise, that you don't have the responsibility of the program at the beginning. I have contact with people in the movies. I've been working on this movie last year, which was something I wanted very badly for many years. I was thinking, "Why don't they ask me to do something? [Laughter.] And I'm not very satisfied, not with what I've produced for this movie.

KANE:: What do you find more satisfying?

MÉZIÈRES: I like the pressure, and I found some pleasure in being pushed and to work for a flick and to have people waiting for me.

When I deal with a whole page, I feel that I have to be very cautious of everything. There, I felt a certain freedom. And I enjoyed it very much. A freedom of expressing. It doesn't matter. My drawing had no importance. If it was a good or bad drawing, well. The idea was on the costume, the setting of the scene. So I enjoyed that.

Unfortunately, the movie doesn't satisfy me. I think the final solution is to make our own movie as what Bilal is doing. His drawings are big like that. Just felt pen, you know. But it was good. It was fun. It was just absolutely with no importance. Bilal is doing his own movie. He is preparing his own movie right now, with a script from Christin. They are working together and they are making it and it seems like they are going to be doing it.

KANE:: Between Valerian, which has now become sort of central to your whole existence, and, at the same time, the possibility of films and such, do you find yourself fulfilled or are you still sort of casting about for something?

MÉZIÈRES: I don't want to pile up the books. I don't want to be the man who makes 45 Valerian books. This has no interest to me. I enjoy doing Valerian, but I don't want to make Valerian my whole life, the center of my life. It is possible to do other things. You should not lose your energy on little things. It is dangerous sometimes to do too many little things. A book is something important. It's true that last year the work on this film was exciting to me at the beginning. Christin said, "Remember that in two years what will be important will be the book that you produced this year."

GARY GROTH: Do you feel less involved?

MÉZIÈRES: I don't think I agree with the directing. And I think the story itself is not good. Christin has been working on the story with them, and he's been very disappointed. In fact, it's not a good subject any more. I think it's too late for such a movie. So, I don't know. But I am ready to work on another movie.

KANE:: So at this point you're in a position where you're comfortable with the Valerian material that you've done and you are in a position of waiting and seeing.

MÉZIÈRES: No, I can't wait much because I don't earn that much money. So I can't allow myself not to work.

KANE:: I thought all the French cartoonists were millionaires. [Laughter.]

MÉZIÈRES: Ask my wife. No, I always try to have enough money for my needs. I'm not rushing to work, because I can't work quick on two things, but I don't want to work under pressure and bury myself in work. I can less and less do that. I find myself working slower and slower and slower.

GROTH: Do you have the sense that you're constantly growing and developing as an artist?

MÉZIÈRES: No. I think that I do some work better than other. I don't define myself as an artist. I define myself as a storyteller. I'm a storyteller.

Boom and Crash

KANE:: Do you have a lot of optimism about what is happening in European publishing today? Do you feel that you are in a boom period or do you feel like you are approaching a crash?

MÉZIÈRES: I think the industry of comics in France lately is not in good health at all. It's been fantastic for the last 10, 15 years. But I can see it with the sales of my books or even the bestsellers. The sales are not very good because people don't have money. This is an economic point of view. We can do nothing about that.

On the production of comic books in France, I think there's been a fantastic period before, but right now it seems to be very limited. Once again, I don't read comics. I look at it. I like some drawings. I don't like some other drawings. Some of them I just can't stand. Some books are maybe good. But I don't like the drawings so I consider them bad. I don't think the production is very good. I think the production is aimed to be cheap... not cheap, but commercial, really commercial. Naked girls. I have nothing against naked girls, but one butt in each frame? No! All you see in some magazines, you see only butts, only pricks. OK, it's a liberated story, but it's such a dumb story. I've got nothing against butts if it's a good story!

GROTH: Do you think those kinds of stories are cynically done?

MÉZIÈRES: Butt sells. And necessarily, it will not sell long.

KANE:: Do you think it is connected to the time in which the material is done? That, in effect, those butts and such are typical of a very exploitive quality that requires intense material? In American films, we have nothing but nudity and murder.

MÉZIÈRES: Goscinny started Pilote in 1959, and the beginning of the revolution in comics started when I just came back from the United States. I think in '65, '66. I was like a surfer on the top of the wave. [Laughter.] I was part of it, really lucky. People were doing what they wanted to do, and if they wanted to draw butts and sex they did it, because it was their feeling. And it was fine. But right now it's going back. The mind of the publishers previous to this revolution was "Our audience wants nice stories. We should do that for little kids." Now our audience wants butts, wants sex, wants murders. And so you do that, everybody is doing it.

KANE:: Do you have the feeling, though, that a lot of young writers, artists who are growing into the field, know nothing else? They really want to do murder and butts and stuff like that.

MÉZIÈRES: No. I think it's because first they are not looking too much outside the comic strip. They should look more. But that, I think, is a question of some sort of economic pressure. That if they don't put enough of that in the story, the publisher would not take it, not buy it. I think, still, quality pays in France. And it's true that you can find some comic strips with no butts and blood or no sex really. But, it is difficult right now; sales are not very good. And what sells well is what I should call vulgar. It is vulgar because it is stupid.

KANE:: You feel that the artists and the writers who are coming up now, if they had choices, they would not reflect the attitudes and the obsessions of the material that's being published, that they would have concerns and interests that would be outside this range of concerns?

MÉZIÈRES: I think they could and they should because it could be refreshing. It would be so different.

KANE:: I agree that they should, but do you think that they could? Do you think that without pressure they would be doing the same thing? Do you know Liberatore's work?

MÉZIÈRES: Yes, I do.

KANE:: Do you think that if Liberatore had no pressure that he would be doing something else?

MÉZIÈRES: No, I think he is like that. But he says himself he's more of an illustrator than a comic strip storyteller. He is doing comic strips because it sells better than illustrations.

KANE:: Do you think there is no special pleasure and delight that he may draw from the material that he's doing?

MÉZIÈRES: Oh, yeah. But what he is doing is top quality. What Liberatore is doing is fine to me. I have nothing against his work because I think what he's publishing is excellent work. If he likes the things he likes... fine. No problem. What I am against is that some younger people are not specially gifted for what they are doing. It's not their style. It's not their quality.

KANE:: So you feel it's entirely economics?

MÉZIÈRES: I think it's entirely economics. That's why I think that comic strips are not in very good health. Still, there is room for creativity.

The magazines don't exist any more. They are almost on the verge of extinction. Magazines like Pilote are not in good health. A young artist has to try things. Nobody arrives with a ready-made idea of "I'm going to do this," so what you need is to be published. You need to experiment [with] things, and a magazine is where to experiment. Short stories. Eight pages. Six pages. Twelve pages. It's bad, but you completed it and you [are] paid for it. Making a book, a 46-page book, when you are a beginner... well, you know, the first ten pages will be so different from page one to page ten. And he would do it again, or decide it is no good. It can't succeed.

GROTH: Are most French publishers guilty of that exploitative mentality?

MÉZIÈRES: I think it's been difficult. I'm not aware of the economic pressure. The machine just started turning too fast, because it's true you can't sell the same book for three months without bringing something new.

KANE:: You're saying in effect that the publisher is a victim of the time as well.

MÉZIÈRES: I think the publisher is a victim of the fantastic growth of the sales.

GROTH: Which publishers in France would you say have resisted that trend?

MÉZIÈRES: [Pause.] I don't know. I think, maybe Casterman, which is more solid.

GROTH: Conservative?

MÉZIÈRES: Conservative. Dargaud has published so many bad books which were going right from the printer to the dump. Really. Who's going to buy that? And many publishers do that. There's been maybe a little too much emphasis on comic strips in France. It's been fantastic for the business.

Art and Story

GROTH: I was curious about something you said Saturday.

MÉZIÈRES: I said a lot of bullshit. [Laughter.]

GROTH: You said you were a storyteller and not an artist, and I was wondering what distinction you were making between the two. How did you mean that?

MÉZIÈRES: Hmmmmm. My preoccupation is more of telling a story through drawing, and I don't find myself as a canvas artist, you know. Especially I don't find myself as a one-drawing artist.

GROTH: Right.

MÉZIÈRES: I'm much more in tune with putting several drawings together and finding a rhythm. Finding the specifications of comic strips, which is good drawing, of course, but the narration, the graphic narration, which is definitely something which interests me.

GROTH: Is it your highest priority?

MÉZIÈRES: Yeah, yeah. The graphic narration. And building the narration through images. We are just beginning to discover that we can do something different than putting frame, panel, frame, panel, frame, another page, another... We can do so much more than that. And that's something which is really interesting and which is steadily evolving and will, I hope, go on in its evolution.

Arrangements and Rhythms

KANE:: You told us on the last piece of tape that you get material from Christin that you and he have sort of talked over and arrived at. Then ultimately, you get 15 pages of typed copy. From that point on, how do you go about arranging the work, interpreting the copy? How do you approach your work?

MÉZIÈRES: I think it is going back to almost a movie-making of a book. It's finding the sequences, and I have a feeling that the sequences should start from one page and finish at the end of another page. I like the abrupt cut of turning the page and looking at -- not finishing the sequence halfway in the page because the script writer has many frames in that page. So I make very small sketches of [the] page and I find a rhythm of what's important in that sequence, and what's less important, and to try to set it on two, three, four pages, if it's necessary. So it gives a respiration, a breath of music in the drawing, in the rhythm of the book. I set the pages and I do little sketches framing some sequences, or on the contrary, put more emphasis on this sequence.

KANE:: What happens if your rhythms and Christin's rhythms are somewhat different?

MÉZIÈRES: I set the rhythm.

KANE:: What if in effect, he's overwritten? What if you have too much story?

MÉZIÈRES: Well, I would cut things out. I would say, "Pierre, this is too long. This is no good. We have to work something different." And he will, of course, agree with me. He has no choice. He has to agree. [Laughter.] Pierre would, of course, always accept to cut down things. It isn't a movie. To add things -- if I say, "This is too short. I need three more frames here. What do you want?" If I have the feeling that it's too short, I would find my solution for stretching. That's why I set more pages, so I don't need to stretch one sequence. I just take my time in that sequence.

GROTH: Now speaking of rhythms, you said that you get a script in parts. That you like to sort of be kept guessing as to what's going on.

MÉZIÈRES: I know the story itself, but I don't know the details of the story.

GROTH: I was going to ask you if that's in any way problematic in terms that you don't know the exact whole?

MÉZIÈRES: Oh, no. I know exactly. It all depends on the subject. It is true that Pierre could play tricks on me at the end of the story because we were dealing with a very precise subject. So it was no real problem. When we deal with science fiction we're creating an alien world, Pierre says, "OK, it should be, you know, a fantastic city." [Claps hands together twice.] That's it! [Laughter.] It's up to me. Of course, we talk [about] what are the people living in this city doing. But he says, "It should be beautiful." "It should be great." "It should be dark." So when we deal with small science fiction subjects, I know all of the story of course, because [there were no surprises in what I've drawn;] I didn't draw something that was absolutely necessary at the end of the story.

There's nothing set rigidly in our way of working. He knows that I should not retouch his text. He always agrees on retouching the text if I put the proof that it's necessary. It's OK. No problem. For example, in Ambassador of the Shadows, when Laureline is sitting on that stool and all the riders come and grab her? It's a sequence I just found. It's when I started creating those centaurs that the idea of playing this Afghan game -- you know, when those riders grab a goat skin -- the whole idea came from a photo I saw at the time of that game in Afghanistan. I just thought it was a good idea. So I did the page. I showed it to Pierre. I said, "Look, Pierre, I think I found a little something funny." "Oh, yes, that's funny."

GROTH: Can you articulate what your thematic preoccupations are? In other words, the kinds of characters and conflicts and the social circumstances you enjoy examining most?

MÉZIÈRES: It's difficult to answer that question.

GROTH: Do you work from that end of it?

MÉZIÈRES: We tell a story and Pierre feeds the inside of the story, with little notations, which would be political and sociological. No. It's like in my drawings, when I add a little extra salute, a citation or something. It's coming after the structure of the story.

GROTH: Does Christin come up with a basic plot or synopsis and then you work on particulars and specifics?

MÉZIÈRES: No. It's always exchanges. But when the story is typed, all the most important material of the story is there. I'm always trying to not overlap his work, but to put more of the inside of our story in the drawings so it's more rich.

[To read the rest of this interview, please see The Comics Journal #260.]